Vacanas are the moral compass for the Land of Lime. My friends know how obsessed I have been about figuring out civilizational significance of the vacanas. Ever since I began posting vacanas, I have also been considering writing brief commentaries on them. Today, I want to post four vacanas, which constitute an appropriate commentary on my yesterday’s posting on the two ropeways. All the four vacanas are translated by A. K. Ramanujan.
Both Dasimayya and Allama obviously belong to a pre-ropeway, pre-railways era, when pilgrimage represented a long, often difficult journey. The following vacanas contain reflections on both pilgrimage and the nature of devotion itself.
Dasimayya, 94
What does it matter
if the fox roams
all over the Jambu island?
Will he ever stand amazed
in meditation of the Lord?
Does it matter if he wanders
all over the globe
and bathes in a million rivers?
A pilgrim who’s not one with you,
Ramanatha,
roams the world
like a circus man.
Dasimayya’s fox at least does the pilgrimage the hard way and actually visits the punyaksetras (sacred spaces) even if it doesn’t have the capacity to stand in amazement and meditate. How many of us, devotees visiting Tirupati, can with a clear conscience say that our devotion isn’t instrumental and the objective of our pilgrimage is to meditate at that sacred place, to seek to be one with the lord.
Dasimayya, 42:
A man filled grain
in a tattered sack
and walked all night
fearing the toll-gates
but the grain went through the tatters
and all he got was the gunny sack.
It is thus
with the devotion
of the faint-hearted
O Ramanatha.
Not only do we go to Tirupati to bribe our gods and seek favors, our devotion itself is suspect. Dasimayya’s wonderful image of an empty sack aptly characterizes our journey through life. Our fears are anxieties over insignificant demands that life makes on us, be they taxes and tolls. As Dasimayya and Allama repeatedly say if we do not seek to be one with Siva, then all our rituals and pilgrimages do not matter. I would in fact extend this argument and suggest that same quest should be our goal within human society too.
Dasimayya, 98
To the utterly at-one with Siva
there’s no dawn,
no new moon,
no noonday,
nor equinoxes,
nor sunsets,
nor full moons;
his front yard
is the true Benares,
O Ramanatha.
It is here that Dasimayya makes a radical suggestion: for a true devotee, his front yard itself would be Tirupati or Benaras. He needn’t go anywhere else.
Allama, 959
Feed the poor
tell the truth
make water-places
for the thirsty
and build tanks for a town -
you may then go to heaven
after death, but you’ll get nowhere
near the truth of Our Lord.
And the man who knows Our Lord,
he gets no results.
Like Dasimayya, Allama too consistently argues for an advaitin position: to realize the unity of jiva (living being) with Siva. Here he isn’t speaking of pilgrimages but in fact Allama is even suspicious of all acts of charity and compassion that all religions valorise. He doesn’t believe those acts - and even being truthful - would enable a devotee to understand the truth of Siva. Allama advocates attaining a state of being where the knowledge of the truth of Siva takes us beyond all results. That is, a devotee who understands the truth of Siva doesn’t care about results.
To me, this represents a simple quest: to overcome instrumentality in our lives. Our ideals and actions aren’t motivated by a desire to attain anything. We don’t tell truth, build tanks or quench the thirst and hunger of the needy to attain any merit. Allama completely rejects the premise of Karma theory. For Allama, doing the right thing isn’t the path that leads to the truth of Siva. Moreover, the devotee who has the knowledge of Siva has already moved beyond results.
3 Comments
Prithvi, please do not get me wrong, but why, why are Vacanas the moral compass to LOL? Surely intellectual thinking (like you posses so vastly) will not limit you to anything [let alone Vacanas]. Why should you base vastness of thought against [the basis of one form of] intellectual [albeit narrowly defined] argument?
Why do you think that your friends limit you and think that you have to articulate the significance of the Vacanas? Why are the Vacanas significant or more significant than other social movements [or attempts at social decree]?
Giri, recognizing ‘vacana’ as a moral compass for LOL, to think about issues such as pilgrimages and building ropeways or cable cars isn’t to ignore other discourses and social movements. in so far as the signifance of the vacanas themselves is concerned, i want to say the monograph i am working on at the moment would respond to some of your concerns but it is also time we have a long chat about that. let me here just say that the four vacanas that i chose in fact offer a radical critique of much of our social practices. consider the final vacana by Allama, which advocates attaining a state of being where one is beyond results, which compels us to go beyond pilgrimages or even acts of charity and compassion. What Allama demands of us is to remove instrumentality from our lives. what can be more radical than that, given the fact that allama isn’t even advocating the kind of devotion that Dasimayya seeks. anyway, give me a month. i will have three or four substantial postings on these themes.
Prithvi, I do not think that you were/are trying to ignore other discourses and social movements. I was wondering about the basis of selection, but then you have addressed that when you said that you will be writing an essay about the same.
I cannot disagree or argue with the intellect of the Vacanas you have quoted [or any of the Vacanas], but a religious interpretation of them would require submission, and your interpretations are not religious. Analysis and assessment of the Vacanas’ historical or current value [in my mind] relieves their dogmatic value. My question was the basis of declaring the Vacanas to be a moral compass; it seems that there should be a reason for the choice, a reason to say that that Vacanas stand above why it has to submit to dogma and why it can rise above it in the way alternative existential preaching has not. I say this because every preaching in its fundamental sense can be interpreted to be above dogma.
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